No longer a favoured friend?

It's hard to believe, but it is 10 years since Friends Reunited, the first
social networking site to capture the British imagination, was founded.

A decade ago almost to the day, husband and wife team Steve and Julie Pankhurst came up with the concept of an online network that people could use to reconnect with lost school chums.

It's difficult to believe for two reasons: one that social networking, which still seems a relatively new phenomenon, is actually 10 years old. And two, that Friends Reunited, which in its 2003 heyday had more than 20m registered users, now attracts just 1.3m unique visitors a month.

Once the darling of the UK social networking scene, Friends Reunited, bought by ITV in 2005 for £175m and sold to Brightsolid this year for just £25m, has recently been described by one analyst as "just a footnote in the history of social networking".

But why did the British-born technology company, whose subscription-based model helped it weather the dot.com crash, lose its dominance to US imports such as MySpace and Facebook? And how can Brightsolid, a subsidiary of Beano publisher DC Thomson, reverse the ailing brand's fortunes?

The answer to the first question is clear cut for Ian Maude, head of internet at Enders Analysis. By 2005, the Friends Reunited team had stopped innovating but were still charging. These problems persisted and worsened under the ill-fated ownership of ITV, who massively overpaid for the property as part of the rush by large media companies desperate to get a "new media strategy".

Maude thinks the fact that ITV didn't take the paywall down quicker was one problem, on top of the fact it was not a core business for the TV company. Another reason why industry analysts cite was the lack of cross-promotion.

After Brightsolid bought the property, it also snapped up its two subsidiary businesses: Friends Reunited Dating and Genes Reunited. The latter was widely considered to be the most valuable part of the Friends portfolio, particularly for Brightsolid, which owns the heritage site, findmypast.co.uk, and is looking to leverage the Genes business more than ITV ever did.

Unlike social networking sites, which offer an experience most expect for free, people happily to pay up to £64.95 a year (Genes Reunited's platinum package) for access to large databases, such as 1911census.co.uk, which Brightsolid owns, as they piece their heritage together.

Despite Friends Reunited's waning appeal, Chris van der Kuyl, the chief executive of Brightsolid, is confident he can re-invigorate the core site enough for it to still be around 10 years from now. One plan is to make Friends Reunited a social destination focused on "stronger connections with real friends", rather than the "hundreds of 'friends' people have on sites like Facebook".

He also admits that the site needs to become "stickier", so people's time on it increases. "Right now a lot people just click on quickly for a brief snoop to see if anyone's personal details have changed. We know for our advertising model to work and to get people more engaged, we have to introduce quirky features, such as social games, which keep people's attention for longer and stop the site being so voyeuristic," he explains.

Brightsolid is also investing in the dating and genes offshoots but it seems that reinventing Friends Reunited is taking up the most effort.

Maude thinks van der Kuyl could be on to something "if Friends Reunited truly differentiates itself from Facebook", but Lorna Tilbian, executive director and head of media research at Numis Securities, is not convinced.

"By the very nature of technology, everything evolves and changes, and revolves around fashion and fads. It's difficult to turn the clock back in the internet world where it's all about the latest innovation."